Put Down the Sudoku and Put on Your Tap Shoes!

I took my first tap dance instruction last night. I am 46. Not 11. Not seven, like all the other little girls trying on tap shoes. Forty-six. I’m at that age where the brain has already begun Swiss cheesing. Neuronal receptors are as unreliable at picking up a message as chopsticks are at picking up a greasy dumpling. More misses than hits. My neurons are off thinking about picking up a bottle of black toenail polish instead of the instruction that’s happening on the other side of my face.

So tap class could have been a hopeless disaster. But it wasn’t. Those neurons can fire when they want to. Not for very long, but they still got it.  I was able to tap when I was supposed to tap…for the most part…after Miss Bonnie went over it six times. Sometimes I tapped even when I didn’t need to tap, for extra credit. Because if I am anything in tap class, aside from an elephant on ice skates, I am a teacher-pleaser.

I thought that if I just watched Miss Bonnie’s calves and feet, my calves and feet would automatically remember what hers did. Miss Bonnie rolled up her black, beautifully fitted spandex sweat pants, (I’ll talk about how hot she is in another paragraph, if it seems appropriate) so we could see her calves and see how she was moving. The way my brain works, I am a visual learner. I have to watch to learn. So I was watching her calves and I had it. I knew exactly what to do.

But then something weird happened. Her sweats didn’t stay rolled up. They rolled down during all her toe and heel and toe and heel and heel and toe and toe and heel. And then I got confused. This is the part where I realized just how far my brain has declined. I couldn’t transfer over what I learned from watching the calves, onto the sweats. She did the same moves, but the visual had changed ever so slightly and I didn’t have the neuronal capacity to pretend I could still see her calves or to remember what she showed us a minute ago with her calves, and do the toe and heel and toe and heel.

I looked around the room to see if that threw off anyone else. Surely, it must have. But for the most part, they were still toe and heel and toe and heel and heel and toe and toe and heeling it. The sweats didn’t throw them off. Note to self. Your brain is further along in the Swiss cheese process than all of their brains. Become best friends with them so you’ll have someone to come visit and wipe the drool off your chin when you are living out your sunset decades horizontally, on a Craftmatic adjustable bed.

I went home and showed my family my new moves.  They laughed at me. They said I look very stiff and why aren’t I doing anything with my arms.

But I said, “I’m going to be good at this, you know! Wait ’til I get my own tap shoes!”

They laughed some more and tried to get me to stop, not because of the noise, or that they were concerned I’d hurt myself, but because it was just too painful to watch.

What I have come to understand after just one tap class in a small room with a large mirror and ten other 46-and-up year olds, is that we are not what we appear to be in the mirror in front of us. It’s in our minds where it really counts. If there’s any chance that what we actually look like could match up with what we think we look like, we are going to have to take this tap show on the road. Maybe the road to the nursing home, to perform for people who can no longer see beyond their lunch tray or hear if any of us fall. Then maybe we’ll work our way up to zoo performances…because there is no unconditional love like imported reptilian love.

Mark my words. We are destined to become a dance company. I can feel it. I can already see the article in the Columbus Dispatch: “Never Too Old for Riverdance“. I can see the TV news cameras opening up the story with a zoom on our feet, while we’re doing all those words for steps Miss Bonnie was calling out.

I have to get the right socks. Last night my toes were all scrunched up in my ill-fitted socks and borrowed tap shoes. I didn’t buy a pair of tap shoes because I wanted to see what I thought of tap first. I didn’t want to buy yet another pair of shoes that were just going to sit in my closet once the class was over, and mock me. But after one night, and more neurons firing at once than I thought possible, I am so getting the shoes. Tap class is my ticket to getting my brain to function again. I might have to get some leg warmers, too. And those terrycloth wrist thingies. Maybe a Nike headband. I’ve already cut the sleeves off of three of my t-shirts.

(Pictures to come!……….NOT!)

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